


Full Immunity and Means

by glorious_spoon



Category: Hawaii Five-0 (2010)
Genre: Banter, Bisexual Male Character, Coming Out, Concussions, Confessions, First Kiss, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-22
Updated: 2018-09-22
Packaged: 2019-07-15 13:25:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,648
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16064060
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/glorious_spoon/pseuds/glorious_spoon
Summary: “So,” he says later, in the car. “Bisexual, huh?”“Really?” Danny snaps, clinging to the grab-handle for dear life as they slalom into oncoming traffic. “Really, now, you want to have this conversation now?Eyes on the road,"he adds, several decibels louder, when Steve glances at him.





	Full Immunity and Means

**Author's Note:**

> Just rewatched Hawaii Five-0, so have a totally silly bit of a thing set somewhere in the early seasons of the show.

Kono is the one who finds it first. They’re tracking a software developer whose dates have a bad habit of turning up dead; Chin is looking into potential Yakuza connections back on the mainland, and Kono is sifting through an extensive array of baffling social media accounts while Steve leans back against the conference table and tries to look more interested than he actually is. Danny is, once again, running late.

“Huh,” Kono says suddenly, and Steve glances up to see… woah. That’s an impressive array of shirtless men making seductive faces at the camera.

“Grindr?” he asks, squinting at the screen.

“Geosocial networking app for gay men,” Chin says without looking up from his screen.

“So, like… a dating site?”

“Dating, hookup, either way,” Kono says. “It looks like it wasn’t just women our perp was focused on. I wonder if…” she trails off again. “Hey.”

“What?”

“That’s… huh. Wow.”

“Very enlightening, cuz,” Chin murmurs. Steve yawns, only remembering to cover his mouth halfway through, and looks up at the screen, and then he stops, too.

It’s Danny.

He’s got a shirt on—a nice blue pinstripe—and the picture is shot from a flattering angle, but he’s not macking on the camera like some of the other guys, just smiling, little creases around the corners of his eyes and the wide blue ocean out behind him. It looks, Steve thinks, like it might have been taken out on the lanai. _Danny W. Age: 38. Currently looking for: friendship or more._

“Wow,” Kono says again.

Chin glances up at the screen, rolls his eyes, and goes back to his columns of offshore bank holdings. Which is probably really the most appropriate reaction, but Steve can’t seem to help himself. “Did he make that account?”

“I mean, there’s no way to know for sure,” Kono says. “It just turned up because the proximity is—”

A door slams shut somewhere in the building, and then there are familiar quick footsteps on the hard floor. “Hey, look, I’m sorry I’m late, Gracie forgot her…” Danny comes to a halt at the table and looks around. “What? Okay, what’s with the staring, do I have something on my face?”

Kono snorts, but Steve feels—he feels _caught_ , like he was looking at something private, which is stupid; it’s a public profile with Danny’s face right there for the world to see.

Kono turns the screen so Danny can see it, and says, faux-casual, “So, why do you have a Grindr profile?”

Danny pulls his reaction pretty well, Steve will give him that. “I’m sorry, you want me to explain what a social media app is for? Aren’t you supposed to be the youthful techie-type person here?”

“Social media, huh.” Kono wiggles her eyebrows. “Tell the truth, did Rachel sign you up for this? Because you really shouldn’t let your ex-wife get involved in your dating life. For, uh, obvious reasons.”

“No,” Danny says irritably, “Rachel did not sign me up for it.”

“Oh,” Kono says. And then, flushing, “ _Oh._ So you’re—I mean—what about Rachel?”

“Oh, my God,” Danny says. “Really? This is what we’re all doing with our morning?”

Chin puts up his hands. “Hey, I’m not involved with this.”

“You never mentioned anything about—you know, guys,” Steve says, because apparently this is a day for his verbal filter to take a hike.

“Thank you all, this is wonderful, the workplace harassment before I even get a cup of coffee, it’s great,” Danny says. He sounds exasperated, put-upon, totally normal. “And by the way, the word you are all so ineptly groping for is _bisexual_. I’ll be in my office, call me if someone else turns up dead.”

He spins the screen back and strides out of the room without a backward glance. In the echoing silence that remains, Kono makes a face. “We should apologize.”

“Good call, cuz,” says Chin, very dryly.

Later that morning, Steve sees Kono through the window of Danny’s office, holding out a cup of coffee. Danny takes it, says something; she punches his shoulder and laughs.

Steve looks away.

* * *

“So,” he says later, in the car. “Bisexual, huh?”

“Really?” Danny snaps, clinging to the grab-handle for dear life as they slalom into oncoming traffic. “Really, now, you want to have this conversation now? _Eyes on the road,"_   he adds, several decibels louder, when Steve glances at him.

“Sorry,” Steve offers.

“For being a nosy dick or for the impending vehicular manslaughter?”

“For, you know.” The red Maserati they’re currently chasing blows a tire and starts to list dangerously to the right as they skid around a turn. Amateurs. Steve spins the wheel and accelerates. “For not being as affirming about it as I should have been.”

“Affirming, that’s a great word, did you read that in a book?”

“Jesus, Danny, would you give me a break? I’m trying to apologize here!”

“Well, for the record, you suck at it,” Danny says, and then three armed men pop out of the alley up ahead and start shooting, and for a while they have other things to focus on.

* * *

“I’m sorry,” Steve tries again, several hours later, after he’s been released from the hospital.

Okay, after he’s checked himself out of the hospital AMA. What? It’s a minor concussion. He’s had worse from surfing.

“I hope you didn’t drive yourself here,” Danny replies without looking up from his paperwork.

Steve musters all the offended dignity he can manage, which isn’t much at this point considering that his shirt still smells like rotting fish. There was a change of clothes in the trunk of the car, but, well. The car. That’s probably something else he should apologize for. “I’m not an idiot; I took a cab.”

“I’m not even touching the first part of that statement,” Danny says, and finally looks up. His lip is split and there’s a smudge of charcoal across his forehead where he must have pushed his hair out of his face. His eyes are very blue. He looks exasperated and maybe—reluctantly—fond. “Did you seriously sneak out of the hospital with a head injury so you could apologize for being a pain in the ass?”

Steve considers for a moment. “You know, you have a way of making things sound much worse than they are.”

“Or,” Danny counters, “maybe you make a habit of behaving like an absolute lunatic and I’m the only one who ever points it out, have you considered that?”

Steve shrugs. That seems like more or less the same thing to him, but he came here to apologize, not to argue. For once.

“Okay, okay.” Danny sighs, puts down his pen, and pushes his chair out. “Come on. I’ll give you a ride home.”

“I can drive.”

“I’ll pretend you didn’t just say that.” Danny holds out his hand. “Give me your keys.”

 _“My_ —”

“We could take my car, but some idiot sank it in a large mound of what the towing company is euphemistically calling ‘biological waste byproduct’. Fish guts, Steven. You drove my car into a pile of fish guts. Maybe try apologizing for that while you’re at it.”

“I’m sorry I drove your car into the cannery dump site,” Steve recites obediently.

Danny nods encouragingly, like he’s coaxing Grace through a difficult homework problem. “And?”

Steve squints. Despite what he told the nurses, his head is actually killing him. “I’ll never do it again?”

“And you’ll pay my cleaning bill,” Danny corrects. “Although I also really hope you never do it again, for the record. Give me the keys.”

Steve considers his options, sighs, and drops the keys in Danny’s outstretched hand.

* * *

“So, why didn’t you tell me?” he asks, after they’re far enough outside the city limits that the sky looms huge and dark above them, the sound of crashing waves a familiar counterpoint through the open windows.

“Tell you?” Danny asks. “Why didn’t I tell you what?”

“You know. About the whole… bisexual thing.”

“The whole bisexual thing,” Danny repeats, in a tone that Steve can’t read. He cracks open one eye and squints across the car; Danny is staring at the road, his face limned in pale blue by the dashboard lights.

“Sorry,” Steve offers.

Danny sighs, and lifts a hand to rub at the bridge of his nose. “No, okay, it’s fine. It never came up, for one thing, and I… I didn’t really want to find out how you’d take it if I didn’t have to.”

Steve blinks, levers himself carefully upright. His head feels like it’s painfully overfull of sloshing liquid, which makes it hard for him to think clearly, but he’s pretty sure he doesn’t like the implications of that. “How did you think I’d take it?”

“Oh, you tell me, Mr. Navy SEAL, ‘I eat nails for breakfast’, Lieutenant Commander Steve McGarrett, how exactly was I supposed to think you were gonna take it, huh?”

It takes a moment for him to parse that. “Danny, you thought— I wouldn’t have—”

“Yeah, okay, I know,” Danny cuts him off. “I know. But lemme tell you, growing up like that where I grew up isn’t a barrel of laughs, and you get in the habit of keeping some things to yourself, you know?”

“Yeah,” Steve says, and swallows down the knot in the back of his throat. This isn’t how he would have chosen to have this particular conversation, but fair’s fair. “I know.”

“How the hell do you think you…” Danny’s voice trails off, and then he says, in a very different tone, “Oh.”

“Yeah,” Steve mutters, and shuts his eyes again.

For a long moment, Danny doesn’t speak, then he clears his throat, says, “DADT not exactly a picnic, I take it?”

Steve doesn’t open his eyes. “Not so much.”

Danny is quiet for a long moment, and then he brakes gently, guides the truck off onto the crunching sand of the shoulder, cuts the engine. They sit there in silence for a while— not a long time, a few minutes at most, but plenty of time for agitation to climb the back of Steve’s throat— and then Danny reaches out, touches his arm, his fingers warm through the still-damp cloth of Steve’s shirt.

“You goof,” he says gently.

Steve looks at him. Danny is smiling at him a little, crookedly, and Steve has an impulse he’s had more than once in the past few years, to crowd into Danny’s space, to reach for him, to—

He squashes it firmly. He’s had a lot of practice at that, too, although it turns out it was easier when he thought Danny just wasn’t interested in men.

Interested in _men_ is still a long step from interested in _Steve_ , though, and anyway his shirt still smells like the beach at low tide, so he keeps his hands to himself. “Danny…”

“Seriously, you and the emotional constipation, it’s heartbreaking, it really is.” Danny shakes his head, ruffles a hand through Steve’s hair, hesitates for a moment, then starts the engine again. “Also, you need a shower, and we both need a nap. Unless you got any more deeply-buried revelations for me tonight?”

The way his eyes catch on the solid breadth of Danny’s shoulders, the slight curl of hair at the vee of his shirt whenever he deigns to unbutton it enough, his square capable hands and the tilt of his mouth and his blue, blue eyes…

Steve shakes his head, and immediately regrets it when the world spins before his eyes. “No, that’s pretty much it.”

“Uh huh.” Danny sounds unconvinced, but he doesn’t push it. “In that case, let’s get you home, Cinderella, before you turn into a pumpkin.”

* * *

Danny has to help him into the house, which is embarrassing but does afford him the opportunity for full-body contact and Danny’s gentle hands lowering him onto the couch, Danny’s familiar annoyance as he coaxes Steve out of his shoes with all the gentle patience of a man who’s done this a thousand times.

“You’re a good dad,” Steve mumbles.

Danny’s hands pause in the act of slipping Steve’s boots off his feet. “Uh. What?”

“You know, with the…” Steve gestures, although it seems obvious enough. Danny is clearly well versed in the art of getting sleepy, recalcitrant people to bed. “The shoes.”

“The shoes,” Danny repeats flatly, then snorts. “Come on. You gotta sleep. Forget the shower for now, we can wash your sheets tomorrow… okay, what are you doing?”

Steve manages not to get tangled up in his t-shirt as he pulls it off his head, but it’s a nearer thing than he’d like to admit. “I’m not sleeping in that. It reeks.”

“Yes, yes, I know, and you’ll take any excuse to get your clothes off— _Seriously,_ Steve?”

“The pants, too.”

“Yeah, fish guts everywhere, I remember vividly, this is why I keep a change of clothes at the office, need I remind you that you are currently too concussed to drive, and I’m less than optimistic about your ability to stand up in a shower for any length of time without passing out and drowning.”

“I’m not going to drown in the shower, Danny,” Steve says, as patiently as he knows how. “But if you’re so worried, why don’t you come in and help me?”

“Come in and help you,” Danny repeats flatly. “In the shower.”

Steve shrugs, tries on a guileless expression that he knows Danny won’t buy for a second. “If you’re so worried.”

Danny blinks at him for a moment, mouth open, then says, “Has that line ever worked on anybody? Because I know you, and I know that’s not the first time you’ve tried it.”

Busted. “You’d be surprised.”

“Yes I would be, very surprised.” Danny brushes Steve’s cheek with the back of his knuckles, something helplessly fond in his expression, then stands and reaches down to give Steve a hand up. “Come on, you nudist, let’s get you cleaned up.”

Steve gestures at his boxer shorts. “I’m not naked.”

“I’m aware of that, thank you, Steven. It was hyperbole.”

“I could be.”

Danny pinches the bridge of his nose with his free hand, looks up at the dark ceiling. “Why is this my life? Thank you, I’ll take that under advisement sometime when you’re not concussed and smelling like dead fish.”

“Okay,” Steve says. “Okay, Danny.”

“My goddamn life,” Danny says again, but his hands are gentle as he guides Steve through the dark house toward the bathroom. “This better not just be the concussion talking, or you and I are going to have words tomorrow.”

“It’s not.”

“Yeah, you say that now.”

“I’ll say it tomorrow, too. Danny, come on.” Steve pulls at him clumsily until he stops, a solid familiar shadow in the dark hallway, the dim glow of the porch light outside outlining the curve of his jaw and gleaming in his hair. He makes a huffing noise that’s both exasperated and fond, and Steve touches his face, finds his lips. Warm breath on his fingers, and he gives up entirely on self control, leans in, and kisses Danny on the mouth.

It’s quick, closed-mouthed, and Danny sighs against his lips when he pulls back, then laughs softly. “You are such a pain in the ass.”

“I know,” Steve says. He’s smiling dopily, he knows it, and he can’t even try to stop. “I’m not going to change my mind.”

“Okay,” Danny says, at length. The pads of his fingers press against the hinge of Steve’s jaw, thumb stroking over his cheekbone, the touch feather-light. He tilts his head up to kiss Steve again, soft and brief, then pulls back and says, briskly, “We’re going to revisit this _later._ For now—”

“Shower, sleep, no strenuous activity,” Steve sighs.

Danny’s smile is a flash of white in the gloom. “Now you got it. Come on.”


End file.
